{"id":260,"date":"2016-06-14T16:31:57","date_gmt":"2016-06-14T20:31:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/?p=260"},"modified":"2016-08-07T02:11:25","modified_gmt":"2016-08-07T06:11:25","slug":"june-14-berlin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/2016\/06\/14\/june-14-berlin\/","title":{"rendered":"June 14: Berlin"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday we left rainy Edinburgh for a two-hour flight with a school group of excitable teenagers who kept on bumping into the back of our chairs.\u00a0 After we landed in Berlin we took a taxi to our hotel downtown.\u00a0 The taxi driver, a third generation Turk, was very happy having been born and raised in Berlin.\u00a0 He reveled in the multi-cultural character of his city and practically gave us a guided tour as he drove us from the airport.<\/p>\n

Berlin is a city with a lot of tragic history, which it honestly embraces, like a parent embracing a child after being sorry for hurting it.\u00a0 I love this city because of that.\u00a0 We first went to the Berlin Wall Memorial on the Bernauer Strasse.\u00a0 This street was in the French zone; the apartment buildings on the south side were in the Russian zone.<\/p>\n

\"A
A Piece of the Berlin Wall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When East Germany put up the wall, in August 1961, they bricked up the apartment street entrances while people were still living in them.\u00a0 On August 22, 1961, Ida Siekmann became the first recorded casualty of the wall by trying to jump from her apartment window, three stories up, down into the street where she lived.\u00a0 She did not survive.\u00a0 An extreme and poignant illustration of the cruel silliness of building walls to stop people from living where they want to live, and still very relevant in today\u2019s politics.<\/p>\n

Next we went to the Brandenburger Tor.\u00a0 I had fond memories of visiting it three years earlier.\u00a0 The monument used to be right on the border between the East and West zone and was a symbol of German division.\u00a0 After German reunification, you could finally walk all around the Tor again, and many interesting historical plaques about its history were erected nearby.\u00a0 Imagine my disgust when we arrived and found the entire site roped off for a giant TV screen to follow the European soccer\/football championships, sponsored by Coca Cola.\u00a0 I have nothing against soccer or Coca Cola, at least not until now.\u00a0 Crass commercialism at its worst, and I do not understand how this could have been allowed.\u00a0 The monument looked much more dignified under soviet control.\u00a0 Boycott Coca Cola!!!<\/p>\n

\"Brandenburger
Brandenburger Tor<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Next we went to the holocaust monument.\u00a0 When I first visited it, three years ago, I did not know what to expect.\u00a0 As soon as I saw it, I was very moved.\u00a0 It immediately conveyed the magnitude of this monumental tragedy.\u00a0 Art at its best.\u00a0These pictures say it best, no further comment needed.<\/p>\n

\"Berlin
Berlin Holocaust Memorial<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Holocaust
Holocaust “Tears”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We finished the day with a boat tour on the river Spree, giving a nice overview of the city.<\/p>\n

\"River
River Spree, Berlin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Photographs \u00a9 2016 P.J. Gardner<\/a>. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday we left rainy Edinburgh for a two-hour flight with a school group of excitable teenagers who kept on bumping into the back of our chairs.\u00a0 After we landed in Berlin we took a taxi to our hotel downtown.\u00a0 The taxi driver, a third generation Turk, was very happy having been born and raised in … Continue reading “June 14: Berlin”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-europe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":563,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260\/revisions\/563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}